Contributory Negligence in UK Law

Negligence depends on a breach of duty, whereas contributory negligence does not. Negligence is a man's carelessness in breach of duty to others. Contributory negligence is a man's carelessness in looking after his own safety. He is guilty of contributory negligence if he ought reasonably to have foreseen that, if he did not act as a reasonable prudent man he might be hurt himself, see Jones v. Livox Quarries (1952) 2 Q.B. 608.

The act must, I should have supposed, at least be a step in the execution of the common illegal purpose If two burglars, A and B, agree to open a safe by means of explosives, and A so negligently handles the explosive charge as to injure B, B might find some difficulty in maintaining an action for negligence against A.

Giving the bestconsideration that we can to the whole matter, we assess the responsibility of the plaintiff In terms of 15 per cent, of the whole, and allow the appeal to the extent of reducing the damages to that extent.

In my judgment, there is no principle of law which requires that, even where there is a breach of statutory duty in circumstances such as the present (where the intention of the statute is to provide protection, inter alia, against folly on the part of a workman), there cannot be a case where the folly is of such a kind or of such a degree that there cannot be 100 per cent contributory negligence on the part of the workman.

Nothing will suffice short of an agreement to waive any claim for negligence. The plaintiff must agree, expressly or impliedly, to waive any claim for any injury that may befall him due to the lack of reasonable care by the defendant: or, more accurately, due to the failure of the defendant to measure up to the standard of care that the law requires of him.

One must discriminate between those faults which must be discarded as being too remote and those which must not. Sometimes it is proper to discard all but one and to regard that one as the so'e cause, but in other cases it is proper to regard two or more as having jointly caused the accident.